Sasse: federal government has responsibility to contain Ebola

A nurse who worked with Ebola patients in West Africa and was under mandatory quarantine at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey was released after threats of suing that her human rights had been violated.

This brings up the question whether the government can force quarantine if there is a risk to the public.

Republican United States Senate candidate Ben Sasse says the government needs to be careful about flexing this power.

Sasse says, “In the case of a true pandemic exposure the government does have power. What the government exists to do is essentially to tax people forcibly, threaten to take your stuff and imprison you which is why we don’t want to use the force of the government to solve many problems. But, in the case of a pandemic, yes, the government does have responsibilities.”

Sasse says, “There is so much of the science that none of us knows so let put the framework in what kind of principle should guide us. I think the answer to the question is yes but there is a bunch of science that I don’t know enough about and the CDC has acted for the last three or four weeks like they knew a bunch of things clearly that they regularly didn’t know so I want to be humble about what we don’t know there.”

Sasse says it appears the C-D-C was not prepared for one of their fundamental duties. Sasse will campaign Monday evening in Hastings and will be joined by U.S. Senator Deb Fischer, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry and former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.